Scientific American

Good to know some things never change.

Nothing is safe from parents' inclination to insist that anything new and different is bad for kids and inferior from the way they grew up. According to an 1859 issue of Scientific American, that darn Chess contraption hinders learning and kids should go play sports instead.

You're better than this, SciAm.

Scientific American isn't having a great week, and from the look of things they have no one to blame but themselves. There are sexual harassment claims against editor Bora Zivkovic, and a separate incident with SciAm blogger Dr. Danielle Lee being silenced after calling out a partner publication's editor for calling her a whore. Get it together.

If you're a student between the ages of 13 and 18 with an interest in science, then grab your lab coat and get to work. Google is taking submissions for their third annual Google Science Fair as of today. They've partnered up with CERN, LEGO, National Geographic, and Scientific American to offer some truly amazing prizes that include scholarships, an expedition to the Galapagos, and a week shadowing a particle physicist at Fermilab.

Ask any scientist in the university system what they spend most of their time doing, and the answer may surprise and disappoint you. Generally speaking, it's not science. I's not even grading papers or overseeing students to nurture a new generation of researchers and innovators. Filling out grant paperwork is the single activity that dominates the days of all too many researchers and academics. Massachusetts based startup iAMScientist wants to change that by acting as a Kickstarter for scientific pursuits and research projects.
Read More

All this has happened before...

When science comes to the matter of bestowing its rewards it should be blind to the mere accident of sex; and one does not have to be an enthusiast on the subject of the extension of the rights and privileges of her sex, to feel that here is a woman who, by her brilliant achievement, has won the right to take her place with her compeers in the Academy, or any similar institution devoted to the furthering of science. The scientific world will undoubtedly agree with Gaston Darboux, Secretary of the Academy of Sciences, in urging the right of Madame Curie to succeed to the position of which her late husband was next to the last occupant.
So says an editorial that ran in the January 21st, 1911 issue of Scientific American. This was a time when neither the US, or France allowed women the same democratic rights as men. Marie Curie, who had already won her first Nobel Prize, was the first female head of the physics laboratory at Sarbonne, a French citizen, and held both a doctorate and a professorship in the field, was denied entry to the French Academy of Sciences because of her gender, her nationality of birth and (false) rumors that she was Jewish.
Naturally, in response, Curie "would not allow her name to be resubmitted for nomination and wouldn’t let the Academy publish any of her work for a decade."
The editorial goes on:

Sock It To 'Em Ada

Scientific American, the magazine I always put in the "not as entertaining as Popular Science but probably more about actual science" box as a kid, triumphantly launched their new Scientific American Blog Network today. It professes to be a place that "unites editorial, independent and group blogs under the magazine's banner."
As one might expect, this is something of an old media/new media move, according to overseeing editor Bora Zivkovic "We are trying to eliminate the artificial line between 'blogging' and 'journalism' and focus on good, accurate writing, no matter what form it comes in or what software is used to produce it. Our bloggers are a part of our team, as ‘continuous correspondents’ or ‘full-time freelancers’."
But the network really gained our attention for its vital statistics:
Read More

This Monday, February 1st, President Obama will announce his budget requests for 2010. While of course nothing has been confirmed, there has been enough communication with unnamed "White House insiders, agency officials, industry executives and congressional sources," that both Scientific American and The Orlando Sentinel have articles up regarding the changes.
The information as we know it boils down to a few things: